45 Off The Grid Hacks | Homesteading Tips, Tricks, And Ideas

Get a hold of these off the grid hacks to help you survive and thrive on your own. Off-the-grid living will render you without any easy and ready help both from man and machine. Make this unconventional lifestyle more fun and effective. These off the grid living ideas and homesteading tips and tricks will help!

Off The Grid Hacks You Need To Know

1. Use DIY Natural Cleaning Solutions

Cupboard essentials like lemon, baking soda, vinegar, salt, olive oil, and castile soap make effective natural cleaning solutions. Use them to remove stains, eliminate odors, scrub your sink, and countertops. Stock up on these ingredients for DIY household hacks when living off-grid. Cleanliness is all the more important when off-grid living.

3. Use Mason Jars For Beekeeping

Beekeeping in a small homestead has its challenges but it isn’t impossible! It isn’t expensive too when you use everyday household items like mason jars. Take this DIY mason jar beekeeping hack and enjoy the perks of beekeeping.

4. Build Your Own Chicken Coop

Raising chickens is an important off-the-grid food source. You only need to ensure your chickens have a safe and comfy place. Build your own chicken coop with any of these awesome chicken coop designs to choose from.

6. Use Apple Cider To Boost Immunity

Apple cider vinegar has more uses around the household besides for cleaning and as a condiment. From personal to animal care, these apple cider vinegar hacks are essential when living off the grid. You can even use an apple cider vinegar tonic syrup as natural cold and flu remedy.

8. Freeze Eggs To Keep Them Longer

When you’re raising chickens, chances are you’ll have eggs more than you can handle in a day. Learn how to freeze with these freezing tricks to keep them longer. Remember to thaw frozen eggs at room temperature an hour or two before using them.

11. Test Your Soil The Pioneer Way

Gardening is one of the most important off the grid hacks. Successful gardening requires basic knowledge in testing the soil for acidity or alkalinity. You can learn how to test your soil the good old pioneer way.

12. Get Free Containers To Start Your Seedlings

How to get Free Containers for Starting Seeds Indoors Photo by happymoneysaver

Recycling is one of the most important off the grid hacks. When it comes to gardening off-grid, its a must. It saves you lots of cash and helps clean up and organize your homestead. Did you know eggshells make great seed-starting containers? There are more surprising containers here for seed-starting.

This may sound simple, but to become a successful gardener you need to have the right gardening tools. ???? pic.twitter.com/gjt3jwGH3z

14. Milk Cows Benefit From Udder Balm

Milking cows play an important role around the homestead. Looking after them and helping them have easier and healthy lives is the least you can do. Make them this homemade udder salve for its comforting and nourishing benefits.

16. Duct Tape Bug Repellent

Get rid of squash bugs without ruining the leaves of your plants. You can prune some of the leaves but you can’t prune all of them. Use duct tape to collect both the bugs and eggs. Duct tape is powerful, they won’t escape it!

17. Freeze Root Vegetables So They Don’t Get Wasted

Growing potatoes, carrots, and other root crops will arrest you with tons of harvest. Learn to keep them longer by freezing. Wash your root vegetables, peel, slice, and blanch. Keep them in vacuum-packed freezer bags for up to 14 months.

18. Black Plastic Sheeting Gardening Hack

A homesteader living off the grid must work to extend the planting season for his own good. Warm your plot faster in spring or keep it warm longer in autumn with black plastic sheeting. A plastic sheeting is not only good for temperature control but for keeping pests and weeds at bay, too.

19. Make DIY Watering Cans

Water-saving is an important skill to learn when living off the grid. Make a DIY watering can with plastic gallons. It’s cheap and effective in controlling the amount of water when watering your plants.

20. Container Gardening Hacks

The more food you grow, the better when living off-grid. But, make sure you can handle it without overworking yourself. Growing them in containers will help you manage. Use old whiskey barrels for this.

22. Duct Tape Jar-Opening Hack

Chances are, you’ll often find yourself wrestling with jars sitting on your cupboard. Stick a piece of duct tape tight over the lid. Hold the other end of the duct tape like a handle. Hold the jar tight and yank the tape to open the jar.

23. Use Crayons As Emergency Survival Candles

Crayons won’t light up a room much, but it’s better than nothing, right? In a pinch you can light these up as an emergency light source. A crayon will burn for 30 minutes, enough for you to find better light sources.

24. Duct Tape And Toilet Paper First Aid

Setting a broken bone using duct tape and toilet paper may save your life, but this should be temporary. It’s best to always keep your first-aid kit complete but if you’re far from it, this trick will do. Seek medical attention as soon as possible for these kinds of medical emergency.

25. Stave Off Frost Bite With Baby Oil

Baby oil has plenty of uses. It can also do wonders for your skin under extreme weather conditions. Lather it on and keep the frost at bay. This is one of the off the grid hacks you should know for winter.

26. Carry All Your Water Gallons In One Trip With A Sturdy Stick

Place the jugs on each end and practice your dead lifts to keep in shape. This will save you some time since you avoid the return trip. Make sure to carry only what you can and don’t overwork yourself.

30. Coffee Ground Hacks

Most homesteaders love brewed coffee in the morning–it is almost a ritual. A homesteader also know, it’s a shame to throw coffee grounds away. They have more uses other than the compost bin. Ingredient for homemade soap and candles, and for personal care are only some of it.

31. Utilize YouTube

Have you met Doug & Stacy? My favorite Off The Gridders. They’re on the grid enough to share their experience with you. Their homestead is 100% self-sufficient, and their channel is brimming with great tips for your own journey.

Read up on the benefits of using a wood burning stove today and you just might get one for your homestead! ???? https://t.co/OM7rnmBqpZ

32. DIY Grooming

This is a fun skill to learn and use! Every off-gridder will love and enjoy cutting their kids’ hair. This is only fitting when you can’t bring a hairstylist along. Imagine the money you can save with this skill.

33. Soda Bottle Hacks

Soda bottles are made of thick material and provide air-tight seal for your food. Add an oxygen assimilator to every bottle to ensure a much longer shelf-life. You can store lots of items, especially food, in them.

34. Replace AA Batteries With AAA Batteries

Don’t have AA batteries when SHTF happens, only AAA batteries? Well, you can replace AA with AAA batteries. Ball aluminum foil and stick it into the space inside a battery compartment. AAA and AA batteries both have an output of 1.5 volts. They only differ in amperage and in a gadget like a flashlight or weather radio, this isn’t a thing you need to be concerned about.

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36. Use A Tarp And A Pile Of Lightweight Branches For A Makeshift Raft

Need to navigate a lake or river without drowning, freezing, or getting eaten by alligators? Spread a tarp and stack lightweight branches in the middle. Then, cover the ends and fasten the whole raft with string or para-cord.

39. Snack Chip Fire Starter

In addition to being highly addictive and delicious, Doritos and other snack chips are highly flammable. If you are outdoors and got some snacks, don’t savor it to the last chip. You’ll never know when you’ll need a fire.

41. Eyeglasses As Tinder

Sunglasses are an effective fire-starting tool and homesteaders should know that. Direct the sunlight through the glass lens into dry materials or fuel. The intense heat will kindle the fuel. You can boost the power of the lens by adding drops of water to the surface of the lens.

42. Off Grid Living Water System

There isn’t always a guaranteed water source when living off the grid. And you never want to have to do without water sources when off-grid living. You can always collect rainwater and this gravity-fed water system is also a great idea.

Convert the Crisco candle into a heater using a square pan and two terra cotta clay flower pots, one large enough to fit over the can and one large enough to go over both the can and the upside down pot with the drain hole covered, that would last for hours.

2 or 3 liter soda bottles make great – and cheap – containers for water. You can collect rainwater or the condensate from an air conditioner in them,,cap them and leave them out in the sun for half a day to sterilize the water then store them,for years preferably in a dark place to prevent possible algae growth and prevent the plastic of the bottles from becoming brittle). If you can get them, several stores (like Sam’s Club) have a plastic carrier that holds 4 bottles by the neck for easy carrying of 4 bottles at a time.Using these, most people can easily carry over 8 gallons of water in one trip. Wrapping a wire or cord around the neck of a bottle and tying it creates a very effective weight to hold down tarps or plastic sheets (a full two liter bottle weighs almost 4-1/2 pounds) The cut-off tip of a tow liter bottle makes a very good funnel, while the bottom makes a light weightcontainer for all sorts of things

One great use for the bottom part of jug is tags to label plants in seed starter tray. You can purchase plastic tags but these are free. Cutting up the plastic gives hands something to do while watching TV — which cuts down on boredom snacking.. Stuff written with waterproof Sharpie pen stays put on the plastic. When I transfer seedlings out to garden, tags go with them so I know what is where until plants are big enough to identify.

The lid part of a pop bottle can be used to keep many plastic bags closed. If you use only part of a bag of chocolate chips you can wind up the end feed it thru the “spout”, lower it over the “spout” and bottle section, and put the lid on it. Plastic bottles can be filled with water, broth, soup, or juice and put in the freezer for many reasons not the least of witch is emergency water and Keeping the electric bill down. Plus if the power goes off it will help keep it cold. Duct Tape has way more uses than most people care to think about. In thin sections it can be stitches or it you have it to spare you can make rain gear.An a ton of other things in between. Vinegar has been proven to not only help animals but people and chores. So just think a little beyond or in some cases behind and you will notice that things have many uses not just one. If it has just one then it is not the best thing to get.

[…] self-reliant even if it has its own set of advantages and disadvantages. Homesteaders can live off the grid, secure in the thought that their health is not in jeopardy, because they eat food that they have […]

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